Third

by Portishead

Media Type: Audio CD

Release Date: April 29. 2008

Label: Mercury

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 6

Average Customer Rating:

UPC: 602517664005

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Tracks

Disc 1

1. Silence

2. Hunter

3. Nylon Smile

4. The Rip

5. Plastic

6. We Carry On

7. Deep Water

8. Machine Gun

9. Small

10. Magic Doors

11. Threads




Reviews

First for Me -	Third Review


I think I will be coming at this album from a different perspective to 90% of you...I had not been a Portishead fan prior to this album. I had heard some of their previous work in passing and been mostly unimpressed. I happened upon this album by accident and it has truly blown me away. It strikes me from reading the mixed reviews that the "traditional" Portishead fans are mad that they didn't stick to the tried n' true formula, whereas, more open minded folks are lauding it as a classic. I'm definately in the latter category. This album is very special in a unique, insular, introspective kind of way...the songs are built around odd, somewhat glitchy, off kilter rhythms (or none at all) that kind of ebb and flow...the sounds provide a lush, and yes, sometimes prickly background to Beth's musings which mostly seem to be inner thoughts about the fragility of life and love expressed in a somewhat somber, if thoughful, tone. This is the kind of album you cherish for it's singular beauty and complete unrelatedness to any music scene current or past. It just is... Now for some comparisons (gotta have 'em for reference): if you mix up the following albums into a witches brew, you might come up with something close to this "This is Stina Nordenstam" by Stina Nordenstam, "Soak" by Mimi (Goese), and "When I was a Boy" by Jane Siberry. If you are fans of these artists you will like this album.

Portiswho? -	Third Review


As you have probably figured out, Third is a radical departure for Portishead. It is a complete change in sound. Gone are the lazy beats, samples, and admittedly tepid scratching that dominated their first two albums, replaced with industrial sounds and loose guitar & drum arrangements. For the most part the album is jarring and dissonant. Gibbons' voice is frequently at odds with the music, unlike the old days when it was an eery compliment. It doesn't work well in part and not at all in whole and is, at the end, a disappointing effort. 'Silence' is unremarkable. 'Hunter' sounds like Mazzy Star. 'Nylon Smile' starts okay, but I suspect I mostly like it because it sounds like a bossa nova. 'The Rip' is just boring. 'Plastic' is actually my favorite song on the album, but that's because it's the closest to the old Portishead sound. 'We Carry On' starts out interesting but drones on for too long. 'Deep Water' deserves special recognition for being spectacularly dreadful. Adrian Utley has loudly expressed his hatred for this song, and it amazes me that anybody actually tries to defend it. It's Beth singing scratchily and off-key over a strumming ukelele. To anybody who pretends to like this song: we know you're faking. The only positive thing about the track is that it sounds hilariously like Bernadette Peters singing 'Tonight You Belong to Me' in 'The Jerk'. Horrible. 'Machine Gun' was the first single. I'm not a fan. A small repeating set of machine-gun-ish beat loops played over and over. 'Small' is a meandering guitar instrumental backing Beth singing about sad things. 'Magic Doors' is a weird start-and-stop drum sample (with cowbell!). Beth sings about sad things some more but never comes near the beat. 'Threads' is 'Small' with meandering drums added. The album never builds any tension. There are none of the operatic moments of the first two albums, no great hooks. I'm not going to have the argument about 'should an artist ever change or not'. The fact is that people like bands because they like that band's sound. Every band you like, you like for their distinct sound. So it's understandable why many fans are disappointed by this weird departure. Some of the changes you can even explain away. Nobody scratches anymore, and to be fair the scratches in Portishead's music were mostly embarrassing. I wouldn't really expect Barrow to bring back the Theramin, and you can only sample "Ike's Rap" so many times. But that's not even the main issue. It's not that Portishead changed. It's that many people don't like their new sound. And if you read anything Geoff Barrow has had to say in the past 20 years, you'll know why. Barrow always hated Portishead's sound (at least, that's what he says). He went through years of screaming and crying about being labeled 'trip-hop', and saying how he doesn't want to be 'corporate background music'. He and Mark Ronson have a well-publicized fued in which Barrow keeps bagging on Ronson's commerciality. Barrow is a tortured artiste. I guess it's easy when you live in a nice house your crap commercial music bought for you. I'm not judging him, it's his life and so forth. But understand that the guy never wanted to make the music that most Portishead fans like. This is the music Barrow wants to make, largely I think because he believes if people reject it, he's accomplished something great. The only thing I can hope is that enough people buy this ill-advised album so Barrow will hate it too, and pull a 180. But I imagine for most Portishead fans this album will just be a disappointment.

I really wanted to like this album... -	Third Review


But the truth is that I will probably never listen to it in the future. If I want to hear Portishead, I'll listen to one of the old albums. It's not that the album is bad, it's that it's boring. To me, in trying to sound "different" from their old stuff, they ending up sounding generic. I feel like I've heard all of this music, the actual instrumentation, before. They sound like someone trying to imitate Portishead, or trying to make Portishead into industrial, but there's is something very definitely missing from the equation. I bought the record the day it came out, I listened to it four times, and I probably won't play it again. It's so disappointing.

Portishead - trip hop = still Portishead -	Third Review


You probably can't call it "trip-hop" anymore, but it's still unmistakenly Portishead. The only real difference from the two albums they made a decade ago is that instead of beats and scratches, Beth Orton's haunted vocals and melancholy melodies are dressed in more organic fare. It's all still a little creepy, a little trippy and really, really sexy. And I still really, really dig it.

Portishead Goes Organic -	Third Review


Overall Impression The CD arrived yesterday in the mail, and it did not disappoint me. I liked it a lot from the get go, and I think it will become a permanent fixture in my car's CD player for a long time. How does it sound? ORGANIC is the best word that I can use to describe this Portishead release differentiating it from the other 2 Portishead albums. It is eerie, haunting, dark, but so are the other albums. In this release, the vocals are mixed harder than the drum&bass tracks. Also, most of the drums and drum samples sound less electronic and less like loops than before. The bass, in turn, tends to sound like a vintage 70's synth. What can you compare it to? Imagine if the James Bond movies from the 60's and 70's had been directed by David Lynch. The songs in Third would be great themes for the films. If you are familiar with Artie Shaw's music, imagine him producing a Portishead CD and you will hear Third.

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Third by by Portishead

							May 15, 2008


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